HCLTech & Thought Machine: AI-Led Cloud Core Banking in Practice

A partnership designed to reshape banking tech

Picture a bank saddled with aging mainframes suddenly able to deploy real-time AI-enabled services across accounts, loans, and payments. That’s the kind of shift HCLTech and Thought Machine want to enable. The two tech leaders have formed a strategic partnership to help banks — from incumbent giants to challenger brands — move away from legacy systems toward an intelligent, cloud-native core. At the center of this effort is Thought Machine’s Vault platform, which, when paired with HCLTech’s banking-domain know-how and regulatory-compliance muscle, is aiming to unlock faster product launches and smoother operations for financial institutions.

The big idea: Vault, rebuilt for the cloud

• Vault Core handles the core banking engine, while Vault Payments takes care of payment processing. Unlike legacy systems built over decades on brittle code, Vault is designed from the ground up for cloud-native deployment, offering real-time processing, scalability, and resilience. The platform’s API-first design makes it easier for banks to plug in other services and create a customized, best-of-breed tech stack.
• A standout feature is the Universal Product Engine, which uses smart contracts to let banks design and deploy new financial products with minimal vendor dependency. Think buy-now-pay-later, innovative mortgage structures, or complex lending products — all configurable by the bank itself, not by a vendor’s roadmap.
• Real-time analytics flow from Vault’s ledger supports AI-enabled insights, enabling personalized customer experiences and more responsive risk management. Banks can experiment with novel product ideas and quickly validate them in production environments.

“This is a move away from rigid, vendor-tied systems toward adaptive, cloud-native cores that can evolve with customer needs,” one analyst noted. (Context drawn from the partnership materials.)

How HCLTech steps in

HCLTech brings a global scale and deep banking expertise to the table:

• A workforce of more than 223,000 employees spanning 60 countries, with broad experience in financial services integrations and regulatory frameworks.
• Full-stack transformation capabilities, delivered by teams certified in Thought Machine’s Vault—ensuring that implementations stay aligned with Vault’s design principles and best practices.
• Leverage of HCLTech’s fintech Centers of Excellence (CoEs) to accelerate delivery and governance, backed by a DevSecOps foundation to ensure secure, speedy deployments.
• A dedicated global CoE for Vault Core and Vault Payments that will work to deliver modular, real-time, and scalable banking solutions tailored to evolving needs.

This setup is meant to reduce operational friction for banks and speed time-to-market for new services, a recurring bottleneck in traditional transformation programs.

The Thought Machine angle

Vault’s cloud-native architecture is the backbone of the collaboration. Built without legacy code, Vault Core and Vault Payments are designed to be modular and adaptable as regulations, customer expectations, and competitive dynamics shift. The platform’s APIs are intended to promote a “best-of-breed” ecosystem where banks can mix and match capabilities from multiple providers while maintaining a single, coherent core.

• The Universal Product Engine empowers institutions to prototype and launch new financial products without being locked into a single vendor’s roadmap.
• Thought Machine already counts major banks among its clients, including JPMorgan Chase, Lloyds Banking Group, and Standard Chartered, underscoring the platform’s appeal to large-scale financial institutions.

AI and data in the banking future

A core promise of the partnership is AI-led modernization. Banks will be able to leverage real-time data streaming from Vault’s ledger for analytics and AI-driven insights, enabling more personalized customer journeys and proactive risk management. In practice, this could mean smarter fraud detection, dynamic credit decisions, and tailored product recommendations — all powered by a cloud-native core that can scale as needs change.

For banks, the implications go beyond a single deployment. This isn’t just software replacement; it’s a rethinking of operating models. By cloud-niering core banking and payments, institutions can pivot toward continuous improvement cycles, faster iteration, and tighter alignment with customer expectations in a digital-first world.

Real-world impact and the path forward

The firms frame the partnership as a blueprint for both established banks and newer challenger brands seeking to modernize without sacrificing security or compliance. The idea is to pair Vault’s flexible product architecture with HCLTech’s governance and regulatory playbooks to deliver a platform-roadmap that can scale across geographies and product lines.

• Time-to-market: Modular, real-time capabilities help banks bring products to customers faster, reducing the drag often caused by bespoke, on-premises cores.
• Resilience: Cloud-native design and automated DevSecOps practices aim to improve uptime, security, and incident response.
• Agility: The ability to spin up new financial products through configurable contracts could accelerate experimentation and reduce vendor lock-in.

Industry observers view this alliance as part of a broader trend: cloud and AI are increasingly seen not as optional add-ons but as core enablers of faster, safer, and more customer-centric banking experiences.

Looking ahead

If the HCLTech–Thought Machine partnership achieves its aims, banks could look forward to a future where core systems are not monolithic gatekeepers but flexible, AI-enabled services. The collaboration signals a shift toward platforms that maintain regulatory compliance while offering the adaptability required to respond to rapid changes in customer behavior and market conditions.

In short, this alliance doesn’t just swap out old software for new. It embodies a broader reimagination of how banks operate — built around a cloud-native core, AI-informed decision-making, and a modular ecosystem that empowers institutions to define their own product roadmaps.

Bottom line

The HCLTech and Thought Machine partnership represents a significant moment in the ongoing modernization of the banking sector. By combining HCLTech’s global integration capabilities and regulatory know-how with Thought Machine’s Vault platform, the alliance aims to help financial institutions shed legacy constraints and embrace a more intelligent, agile, and future-ready era of banking.